Generally, the inventive technology relates to expanding an individual's field of vision beyond the natural periphery to promote safety awareness. Specifically, the inventive technology involves methods and apparatus for optically relaying transformed optical information from beyond an individual's peripheral vision to the individual's line of sight. The inventive technology may be particularly suited to increasing personal safety in environments having moving vehicles equipped with warning lights.
Heavy equipment in motion can present many hazards in the environments in which they operate. For example, forklifts in warehouses, construction equipment on job sites, and other kinds of moving heavy equipment can pose collision risks to individuals also working in those environments. Naturally, collisions of these types can cause serious injury or even death. For this reason, these kinds of heavy equipment often are provided with visual warning systems designed to alert individuals to the locations and movements of such heavy equipment. Examples of such visual warning systems may include flashing lights of various colors, strobes, and other visual indicators designed to be seen and heeded by individuals, thus allowing these persons to navigate around such heavy equipment.
Conventional visual warnings of the type discussed above may suffer drawbacks, however. For example, such visual warnings naturally will only be effective if they fall within an individual's line of sight. Naturally, if the heavy equipment is moving outside of an individual's field of vision, such as perhaps from behind, the individual may not have the opportunity to heed the visual warning and avoid the heavy equipment. This problem can be exacerbated when the individual's other senses are impaired. For example, working environments in which heavy equipment is utilized often may be very loud, due to noise factors such as moving machinery or operating engines, requiring individuals working in such environments perhaps to use hearing protection. Naturally, such hearing protection may block audible indications of the movements and locations of moving heavy equipment, making any failure to see and heed visual warnings even more dangerous.
While conventional technologies may have been developed to address these problems, they may themselves suffer various drawbacks. For example, mirrors potentially can provide one way to increase an individual's field of view. However, by reflecting all elements of the mirrored background within the relatively small area of the minor, distracting elements can be included in the field of view, and any visual warnings may be represented in small size and perhaps may tend to blend in with the background. Additionally, since mirrors simply reflect the background, the light intensity of the visual warning may not be amplified or otherwise increased. Moreover, mirrors may simply depict the background substantially as it exists, and may fail to isolate the visual warning from the background clutter. For example, mirrors may enable image transfer of the entire visual background, whereas what may be desired is simply information transfer of the visual warning. In this respect, mirrors may fail in several ways, such as by failing to emphasize the visual warning, failing to eliminate non-relevant visual information, failing to transform the visual warning into relevant information such as a transformed blinking or other off/on visual representation, or the like. Examples of conventional technologies using mirrors include U.S. Pat. No. 5,674,335, issued Oct. 7, 1997, U.S. Pat. No. 2,371,196, issued Mar. 13, 1945, and U.S. Pat. No. 1,074,145, issued Sep. 30, 1913. However, because these conventional technologies may rely on mirrors, they may have the problems discussed above and may be considered as teaching away from the inventive technology described herein.
The foregoing problems related to conventional technologies may represent a long-felt need for an effective solution to the same. While implementing elements may have been available, actual attempts to meet this need may have been lacking to some degree. This may have been due to a failure of those having ordinary skill in the art to fully appreciate or understand the nature of the problems and challenges involved. As a result of this lack of understanding, attempts to meet these long-felt needs may have failed to effectively solve one or more of the problems or challenges here identified. These attempts may even have led away from the technical directions taken by the present inventive technology and may even result in the achievements of the present inventive technology being considered to some degree an unexpected result of the approach taken by some in the field.